Monday, September 18, 2006

The futurist in me has long expected new religions to start popping up. Our lives are so different from those of people even just a generation ago, let alone three generations back. New tech means new lifestyles, which means new emotional needs, at least to some degree. So new religions seem like a natural. The problem is that the sort of things that religions say are "truth" tend to be pretty weird if you're not brought up on them. Scientology gets around that problem by not telling its followers about their very, very weird metaphysics until they've invested a ton of time, money, and energy into the church.

But I'm starting to see a trend now. There are the folks who claim that Jesus hates gays because, well, yeah, they're a little light on the because part. Now there are megachurches saying Jesus is all about the accumulation of personal wealth. (thanks to Christie for telling me about the article) I don't know what's next coming down the pike, but I think the trend in new religions is going to be making up whatever the hell you want and pretending that it's Christianity.